[solved] Creating static html from content & templates

[WelcomeFamily]

Dear CMS made simple,

Your product seems just right for us (we are slightly techy, but not pro's) Our immediate task is to add a forum site to www.welcomefamily.co.uk, then - if it looks feasible, port the main site to cms.

My question - probably in your forum, but I have failed so far to dig it out, is :

We will only be changing the content every week or two, sometimes only monthly.

Because of this, we would prefer to assemble the flat HTML pages from the cms and upload the changes as static files to the live server. This will then make it more responsive to page requests (nothing to assemble on the fly)

Is there a way this can be done in CMS-made-simple ?

Many thanks in advance,  Alistair

[Peciura]

(nothing to assemble on the fly)

Well, CMSms (including php, smarty, MySQL, javascript) is meant to create things and manipulate them on the fly.

If you in doubt about responsiveness - smarty is good at caching. Also there are rather old posts about converting CMSms sites to static and some stuff in forge.

forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,23244.0.html
forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/topic,1678.0.html

[WelcomeFamily]

Thanks for rooting these out, Peciura. Seems to on the mark - it's an evocative subject, and I do feel that caheing a page is not really the answer - as was pointed out, assembling css on-the-fly is slow : it doesn't' makes sense to me to work that way.

I bet there are loads of sites out there that only make changes every few days or so : would it not be more efficient to create the static page and ftp just those changes to the live site?

Even if you had a grease-lighting scripter, you cannot beat apache dumping out a couple of flat html, css and js files straight from its hard drive. There are references in the posts to "high volume" - it doesn't take a very high number here before you start to see a difference in performance.

Has anyone suggested putting this on to the feature-request list ? As a newbit I do not feel it my place, but happy to support any ongoing census.

Thanks, Best, Alistair

[Peciura]

As you can see kermit managed to achieve loading time as low as 0.07 s. It is really good.

IMO - install CMSms then you will see how speedy or not it is. If your site is not "google.com" - you should be OK

BTW what machine will serve your site ? How many users do you expect ?

[jmcgin51]

Even if you had a grease-lighting scripter, you cannot beat apache dumping out a couple of flat html, css and js files straight from its hard drive.

There is truth in this statement, but this discussion must consider not only actual speed, but also whether the difference in render speed between a static page and a dynamic page is 1. noticeable to the user, and 2. significant to the user.

Let's say a static HTML page takes .05s to render.  Now let's say that a dynamic page takes .20s to render.  The dynamic page takes 4x as long, but in both cases, the page is rendered in less than a quarter of a second.  Am I, as a user, going to notice the speed difference?  Perhaps.  Am I going to be bothered that I have to wait an extra .15s for the dynamic page?  Probably not.

just my $.02

[Sonya]

Let's say a static HTML page takes .05s to render.  Now let's say that a dynamic page takes .20s to render.  The dynamic page takes 4x as long, but in both cases, the page is rendered in less than a quarter of a second.  Am I, as a user, going to notice the speed difference? 

You should consider busy website and server though. Normally (hopefully) you do not have only one page impression per second on the website. If you have 10 impressions, you have to total the time needed for rending of one page (0.20*10 = 2 seconds). That means, that you will serve 10 impressions in the same second within 2 seconds. The busier the website, the more important it will be to reduce the rendering time per page.

just my $.02 

[moorezilla]

Having a built-in, static export feature is also a great security blanket for clients, because they are more likely to understand/feel-better-about having static backup of html/css/javascript/uploads, as opposed to having a backup of sql, php, etc. You can definitely approximate this with site-sucker or wget, but it would be nifty to have a cmsms export to almost html option.

This has nothing to do with the original performance argument, but if I ever smell an opportunity to vote for an export to html feature... well... damn it... I'm going to vote!

[Dr.CSS]

Dynamic vs. static etc....

If you want static html pages to serve there are a lot of programs out there you can use to just make them and upload and forget about it...

Why bother with CMS Made Simple...

[jmcgin51]

Dynamic vs. static etc....

If you want static html pages to serve there are a lot of programs out there you can use to just make them and upload and forget about it...

Why bother with CMS Made Simple...

If you want to drive from here to there, there are a lot of cars out there that will do that.

Why bother with [insert your favorite brand here]?

Because even if you're mostly interested in static pages, the CMSMS admin panel offers many advantages (ability to manage a blog and static pages from the same admin interface, admin log, Form Builder, etc.)

I'm not fully on the "static page bandwagon", but I can understand why some are.

[WelcomeFamily]

As you can see kermit managed to achieve loading time as low as 0.07 s. It is really good.
IMO - install CMSms then you will see how speedy or not it is. If your site is not "google.com" - you should be OK
BTW what machine will serve your site ? How many users do you expect ?

Good set of replies - Reason for using a cms is to allow users to update content (kinda obvious). reason to use static pages is speed. I understand the millisecond argument, however in real life you get spikes, and its then that we would lose interest of the browsers.  Cannot see why this its hard to do a static dump from CMSMS.

FYI - our machine is a single cpu quad core about 2.3 GHz - fast enough. We get up to 5000 pages a day, but then you get your busy sessions - v predictable : after dinner, at the office before 9.00am etc.

I will most likely try CMSMS and see what happens in real life (being a great believer in same!)

Thanks to all for your comments, will close this thread if thats OK.
~ Alistair

[Peciura]

I guess with 5000 pages per day and 4GB of RAM, on average there will be 15% load of only one core (other 3 - idle) . Rarely you will hit 100% load of one core.

Don't forget to add [solved] to the first post.